Wonkette
Think respected conservative intellectual George “Dungaree” Will’s biweekly phlegm-hocks for the Washington Post are bad, but maybe not quite Richard-Cohen-bad? Well they are, and so are his Newsweek columns! Maybe. His most recent one tackles Transportation Reform. Will chastises Republican Ray LaHood, the Transportation secretary, for “wanting” to “fix” America’s “infrastructure” problems, which is his “job.” Will truly despises anyone who walks or bikes or takes a train anywhere, and he wants them to die, DIE DIE DIE, in a ditch, in Portland.
The first paragraph offers some epic, saddening bitchcraft:
You might think the Department of Transportation would be a refuge from Washington’s inundation of painfully earnest and pitilessly incessant talk about “remaking” this (health care, Detroit) and “transforming” that (the energy sector, the planet’s temperature). Transportation, after all, is about concrete practicalities—planes, trains and automobiles, steel, asphalt and concrete.
“After all,” yes, what? He doesn’t appear to realize that “old things get replaced with new things,” the second most fundamental concept behind “time.”
One would expect Ray LaHood to deny the existence of “time” also, since he is from a small town where they eat macaroni and cheese and manufacture equipment.
Furthermore, the new transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, was until January a Republican congressman practicing militant middle-of-the-roadism. He knows what plays in Peoria, and not just figuratively: He is from there. Peoria is a meatloaf, macaroni-and-cheese, down-to-earth place, home of Caterpillar, the maker of earthmoving machines for building roads, runways, dams and things.
But Barack Obama has perverted Ray LaHood into believing that more people drove on Interstates after the government created Interstates and destroyed other transportation options.
LaHood, however, has been transformed. Indeed, about three bites into lunch, the T word lands with a thump: He says he has joined a “transformational” administration: “I think we can change people’s behavior.” Government “promoted driving” by building the Interstate Highway System—”you talk about changing behavior.” He says, “People are getting out of their cars, they are biking to work.” High-speed intercity rail, such as the proposed bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, is “the wave of the future.” And then, predictably, comes the P word: Look, he says, at Portland, Ore.
Riding the aforementioned wave to Portland, which liberals hope is a harbinger of America’s future, has long been their aerobic activity of choice. But LaHood is a Republican, for Pete’s sake, the party (before it lost its bearings) of “No, we can’t” and “Actually, we shouldn’t” and “Not so fast” and “Let’s think this through.” Now he is in full “Yes we can!” mode. Et tu, Ray?
Ray, they WALK in Portland! The role of the government is to STOP PEOPLE FROM WALKING! Every mile someone *walks* in the United States gives three freedom crystals to the terrorists!
Where to start? Does LaHood really think Americans were not avid drivers before a government highway program “promoted” driving? Does he think 0.01 percent of Americans will ever regularly bike to work? Intercity high-speed rail probably always will be the wave of the future, for cities more than 300 miles apart. And as for Portland …
Ha ha, he means for those first two questions to be rhetorical, but the answer to both is “yes.” Jesus. Read Yglesias for more. Jesus. Jesus.
Why Ray LaHood Is Wrong [Newsweek]
It’s only an “L” away from something interesting enough to read…or smoke.
Don’t you mean “Jesus”. “Jesus”.
How original George, that’s the exact same pose Limblob used on the cover of ‘Gunts.’
Did he get his brain AIDS from having bareback sex with Joe Barton?
Oh, this reminds me, is the baseball game on yet?
Well, he is right. They don’t need transportation in Peoria. They all drive Caterpillars - which is bankrupt.
“Does he believe that Americans will ever get off their sweet asses and do something productive?”
“Does he believe this country has a chance in hell of ever not being the most obese place in the universe?”
“Does he think that the murder rate in the United States will ever go down?”
THE AUDACITY OF THAT MAN. Everybody knows that ‘merica will live long as prosper as the most unsustainable, disgusting country, ever. Who does this LaHood person think he is? Clearly the solution to American prosperity is to EAT MORE FUCKING FRIED FOOD and slap the kids around for awhile, albeit while driving an 80,000 pound tank to the end of the block because your ass is too fucking big to sit in any smaller of a car.
IT’S THE AMERICAN DREAM, god dammit. Don’t fucking mess with it.
“Peoria is a meatloaf, macaroni-and-cheese, down-to-earth place, home of Caterpillar, the maker of earthmoving machines for building roads, runways, dams and things.” Thanks for explaining what earthmoving machines are used for, George. Who would have imagined that they could build all of those things - especially “things”, in fact! He should have stopped at “Peoria is a meatloaf”. Hemingway would have.
SmutBoffin: Nahh…they were just huffing CO2 together; it’s the safe alternative to Whip-Its.
Poor guy is more and more irrelevant. Another old white hack who can’t grasp the fact that time passes and THINGS CHANGE. You don’t know what’s happenin’ do you Mr. Jones, er, Will. Time to reTIRE, to coin a transportation phrase.
shortsshortsshorts: You missed the beer. It ain’t Amer’cun if ain’t under the influence.
The American civilian work force is about 154 million. .01% of that is 15,400. There’s more bikers in drag in SF than a measly 16K.
If you ain’t ever been to LaHood, you don’t understand LaHood.
And what the hell is “militant centrism”? Is it like “secular Islam”?
“This column” makes me “think” that “maybe” Will’s “famous” bow ties are filled with “lead” slowly but surely making him more and more “retarded” with every passing “day”.
4tehlulz: Will and Barton know how to do a cheap, weeknight date right: a big tank full of CO2, some misinterpreted climate change data, and (I surmise) hands jobs.
Ride your bike to work? Crazy talk.
http://img2.travelblog.org/Photos/2144/10481/f/43203-Amsterdam-Bike-Parking-Lot-4.jpg
http://blog.miragestudio7.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/bycycle_parking.jpg
America: A Giant Shit Sandwich And I Don’t Think I’ll Take A Bite
by George Will
Chapter One: Get Rid of the DH Already
Chapter Two: Glasses Don’t Make The Man, But They Don’t Hurt
Chapter Three: Jackie Robinson - Overrated??
…
It is high time that the term “discredited douchebag” be officially attached to the beginning of Geoge Will’s name.
I stopped watching ABC on Sunday mornings because I couldn’t take him, with “Hairdo” hanging on his every word. Intellectual, my ass. Everything he says these days can be boiled down to “Get off my lawn.”
I thought the “P” word was “pinhead.”
It’s a good thing the conservative folks in US Merika have such a brilliant writer espousing their views. Keep up the great work Mr. Will.
George’s inaccuracy should be forgiven. Who could possibly be expected to think of typing “bicycle commuter percentage” into Google to get the current figure (0.4%)? Only some kind of new fangled computer genius!
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if La Hood was to prevent transportation, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the drowning of the government.
SmutBoffin: “Hands jobs”? Two-fisted, orgasmic justice!
torera: You, Newell, and Peter Griffin nailed it: “Look Lois! The 2 symbols of the Republican party: an elephant and a fat white guy who’s scared of change.”
Accordion-o-rama: I don’t think you fully grasp the concept of pulling numbers out of your ass to make a point.
dementor: yer links is broke.
“Every mile someone *walks* in the United States gives three freedom crystals to the terrorists!”
We Require More Vespene Gas.
I love when these naysayers explode in a furious rage because their infallibility is being rip to shreads by simple, proven facts. The voting public has subscribed to the tired “That’s Un-American!” ideology for too many decades.
G’head. Scream your fuckin’ collective heads off! I’ll be laughing harder when you realize your verbal torrent is answered by fuckin’ crickets.
Servo: Somebody ate their Wheaties today…
FMA: I thought it was “penisface.”
Know what the perfect five hour trans-con LAX-IAD flight would be like? Sitting in the middle seat between George Will and Cokie Roberts. Oh yeah, that would be sweet.
GOP never lets their ignorance of facts wait upon the strength of their convictions. Also.
George Will, what kind of crack are you smokin?
“…the automobile. It subverted their agenda of expanding government—meaning their—supervision of other people’s lives. Drivers moving around where and when they please? Without government supervision?”
About 80% of the times I’ve been confronted by cops, it’s happened when I was driving a car. You’re saying cars are the way to live free from supervision? You got it backwards, George. When I’m not driving, I don’t need a license, a DMV, an insurance company, cops, nor an ID number visible from 30 yards.
Nobody’s banning backyards, cars, or any type of lightbulb. He’s just making up , out of thin air, this specter of government overreach.
The book title should start with a C instead of a B, then it would describe Will and his insufferable ilk.
And as for Portland… Yes, about that. Portland sucks. It SUKKKKZ! It rains all the time. Our income tax rate is 120%. We elected a known pedophile as mayor and signed over the deeds to all of our houses and the titles to our cars to the city council. Our light rail system is a mobile den of tubercular rapists. Our streets flow with raw sewage whenever it rains–did I mention it rains a lot? What our citizens lack in charm they make up for in arrogance. IT FLAT OUT SUCKS BALLS HERE. So please, everybody, stay the fuck away. You don’t want a piece of this. No visiting. No moving here. None of that. Leave us the fuck alone.
Accordion-o-rama: That was 2 years ago. George Will must have the brand new data, which documents the slow, painful demise of most of these people through regular hyperventilation with smug.
“Freedom Crystals” replace “Whore Diamonds”? I hope not.
blueconversechucks: And the other 20% of the time? Agree, cars are the biggest money-making scheme going. They fund your local fat ass Nazi police department,dirt-bag car insurance company, local incompetent crooked mechanic, and of course swindling oil companies. Imagine all the booze and hobo beans we could buy without all that?
OT: Ha ha! StephanieinCA got sued by a teabagging lizard person!!!
http://www.tcotreport.com/sg1.pdf
Blender: I don’t suppose you have a Cliff Notes version?
Oh Allah forbid anyone do anything to encourage we Americans to rely on our legs for transportation!
Once upon a time I traveled to European lands and was forced to use clean, efficient public transport and foot power to gad about town. It was so horribly cheap and convenient, and it robbed me of 10 pounds of my precious Amercian-grown fat. Another couple of months of that, and I might have ended up looking like one of the freakishly healthy and attractive locals.
The horror… the horror…
Custerwolf:
summary follows:
blah blah blah MEANYHEAD blah blah blah DEMOCRAT SOCIALIST blah blah blah TAXES blah blah blah JERKFACE blah blah blah LIBEL blah blah blah TEARS OF SHAME blah blah blah POOPIEFACE blah blah blah SO THERE!
p.s. TRUCKNUTZ!
Custerwolf: You can read more about the LAWSUIT against ONE OF OUR OWN, Stephanie, here:
[ http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/19/12223/6055 ]
It’s SO GOOD. Seriously. Read the whole thing.
OT: Double ha ha! Even I, a pathetic shut-in who has to type with only my thumbs due to a tragic clerical error, has more friends on Facebook than Stephanie, according to exhibit whazzanumber to the complaint! As MC Steele would say, “*snap!*”
Blender: This is not a “fuck around matter,” you person you. This is war. I declare fucking war on you. Net neutrality demands it.
This pair of shorts is going on a massive tyrade. Leahy has no case. He’s just pissed because of the use of Tax “Fraud” instead of tax “lien.” Omissions and errors, as well as neutrality acts will defeat this frivolous matter.
It is no matter that he owes that much in taxes (the number is not exaggerated) . For him to pray on the innocence of one individual is unacceptable, and he will pay the price for it.
Luckily, as somebody who MAY or may not write for Teablogging, I got her back. Believe me, I am a person you want to have around when it comes to this kind of bullshit.
And for the fucking invasion of privacy allegation? That was ready information, ONLINE. All you needed to do was type it into “teh” Google.
But whatever. Stephanie will soon have a team of qualified professionals on her side. Leahy filed the complaint under his own name, as it appears he can’t afford outside counsel.
We’ll see where this goes, but Leahy really chose the wrong people to fuss with when he’s allegedly in such financial straights.
Stephanie will be just fine.
Your use of “AIDs” in this post and other posts is completely offensive to those who are suffering from this terrible disease. Really out of line. Assholes.
shortsshortsshorts: Number one, there are a lot of typos in Mr. Leahy’s complaint. A LOT. Like, they probably would have been caught if he had run a spell check. That just struck me as funny, because typos in a legal document? Probably not so much.
Number two, you are my personal hero. Net neutrality FTW!
GreyPanter: Total WIN for the Hemingway reference.
tsin: Oh, dear.
Hey guys, that troll from yesterday necroposting the hell out of that Huckabee article from yesterday and, boy howdy, is he showing us!
tsin: “Terrible” disease would be more correct. Now you just pop some pills, adjust your cock ring, and hit the clubs.
edgydrifter: I’m going to send your screed to all my friends in California who are looking to move up north. Sounds it would be a huge improvement over L.A. and your words could inspire a Joad-like exodus to Portland. Thank me later.
tsin:
uh……. but all of us here at Wonkette have AIDS already, and willingly suffer upon each other’s wicked quills.
TRUCKNUTZ!!!!!
Also.
dementor:
I was just in Den Hague, home of the World Court, visiting family, as well as Amsterdam to boot, and if anythings you are grossly and severely understating the case for the mass embrace of alternative methods of personal transport, as practiced outside of the US of A.
You haven’t lived life until some straight backed, bell clanging, Dutch Uber Super Duper Model nearly runs you down on the street with her bike.
If you peer through here http://www.flickr.com/photos/dustindewynde/sets/72157618093151190/ closely you’ll see one of these hot babes collecting her ride out of the pile.
Also.
Mr Blifil:
Oh sweet jesus on a pogo stick, you just HAD to say “cock ring,” which brings me back to my traumatic event of the afternoon - I was walking the imaginary girlfriend’s kid home from school this afternoon, when I saw him stoop over and pick something up off the ground and started tossing it up in the air and catching it. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a COCK RING, one of those cheap rubber ones with the rubber “pleasure” bumpy thingies you get in the bathroom vending machine at your *classier* bars.
Just another day in the Castro.
edgydrifter: You forgot to mention that renting a place here sucks. Unless you like paying San Diego prices for New York sized apartments…
MrsNateSilver: Funny you “should notice” that about Will’s column. I read 3 “paragraphs” and had to “click away” in order “to save myself” the “headache.”
tsin: Out of line? Yeah, you must be, you sound cranky as hell. I don’t have any coke to remedy your situation, but someone in your neighborhood’s gotta at least have some crack.
GreyPanter:
Yes, absolutely. The rest is pure Peggy Noonan.
shortsshortsshorts: Kick some ass Shorts! And let us know if/when you & Stephanie need help. Leahy sounds like an undereducated nitwit who learned law from teevee. He is to be laughed at. Or rather, this time, laughed out of court.
tsin: Shut up fuckbag. You’re out of line. You’re completely offensive. You’re a terrible disease, and we’re the cure.
At least yesterday’s necroposting douchebag stuck around for the abuse. This coward just did another hit & run.
hobospacejunkie: You forgot the “fuck you” part, followed by the “Oh, never mind, somebody already did, with their BIG, AIDS INFECTED COCK” part.
We are Wonkette. We have standards to maintain here. Custerwolf cannot do it on her own, try as she may.
loquaciousmusic: Haha. That Leahy guy is so transparent; he’s clearly flirting with our pal Steph.
And he’s soooo not going to get laid over this.
Who will write complete fabrications and try to pass them off as common knowledge? George will.
Who will support any war, any invasion, any infringement of human rights as long as the victims are poor and/or foreign? George will.
Who will consistently overuse quote marks because he thinks it makes him look smart, even though it doesn’t? George will.
George Will is an incredibly lazy reporter and writer. He doesn’t think well. His handling of the language is pedestrian at its zenith. And those, as the pundit Sapphire used to say, are his good points. He must be a world-class ass kisser to have stayed where he’s been over the years, because the guy has no talent and no redeeming social value.
On Sunday he spent his whole column waxing philosophical about the economic theory behind scalping. Guess who couldn’t get Springsteen tickets?
dude really shoulda had his meximaid iron his shirt before his book cover photoshoot
aeiou:
it looks like there’s this rectangular crease on it, like it just came out of the package. haha. fucking douche.
Once again, George Will has a bad case of old.
You gotta give Will some credit. He’s actually admitting what everyone else figured out, oh, in the stone age… ‘Republican, for Pete’s sake, the party (before it lost its bearings) of “No, we can’t”’
Lascauxcaveman: I bow to your superior skills, sir.
Great. Now I’m ashamed to be a baseball fan. And I really enjoyed watching Kerry (8.38 ERA) Wood “take it up the ass with an aids-infected cock” last night, too. Two outs to get and the bases empty and he blows, (heh,heh, right?) a 3-run lead in the bottom of the 9th in KC. Now what am I going to watch for fun?
It would be great if George Will would come to Portland to speak. Maybe he’d get a good demonstration of why George Bush (I) called it “little Beirut,” and why Cheney never came downtown.
jaba the slut: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Pretty soon, the nice men in white jackets will bring Mr. Will a nice new white jacket, and take him away in his new white jacket to a nice, rubber-padded room with a view of the Anacostia River at that nice St. Elisabeths facility in Northeast Washington.
And pretty soon Mr. Will have a roommate there, Mr. Cohen.
Soon, they will be followed by more of their new guests at the facility: Mr. Gingrich, Mr. O’Reilly, Mr. Steele, Mr. Limbaugh, Ms. Coulter, Ms. Malkin, Mr. Krauthaummer (whatever), Ms. Pelosi, and Mr. Reid.
Once there, all doors to the outside world will be firmly locked, and no one will ever be allowed to leave again. It is assumed that these people will eventually kill each other.
ThePuckStopsHere: Watching the Mariners is fun for anyone not living in Seattle.
Am I the only one who thinks George Will is probably a child molester?
I had this clown in my cab few years ago, and this nerd was lecturing me on how to use the words “SEE” and “WATCH”. I almost kicked the jackass out of the cab.
Mad Cabbie: I’ll bet he is a lousy tipper, or even worse, someone who considers his valuable “advice” as a tip